Deutsche Bank co-CEOs to step down, John Cryan to take over

BERLIN (AP) — Anshu Jain and Juergen Fitschen will step down early as co-CEOs of Deutsche Bank, which has struggled with legal issues and disappointing profits.

They will be replaced by John Cryan, a British member of the company’s supervisory board who has worked for Switzerland’s UBS in the past, the bank said Sunday.

Jain and Fitschen became joint chief executives of Germany’s biggest bank in 2012, succeeding Josef Ackermann, and had contracts running through March 2017.

Deutsche Bank AG said that Jain, 52, and Fitschen, 66, had decided “to step down early from their roles.”

It said that Jain will step down June 30 but has been asked to remain with the company as a consultant until January. The bank’s supervisory board asked Fitschen to stay in his job until the next annual general meeting in May 2016 “to ensure a smooth transition.”

Cryan, 54, will become co-CEO in July and take sole control when Fitschen leaves. He has sat on Deutsche Bank’s supervisory board, the German equivalent of a board of directors, since 2013.

Cryan was president for Europe at the Singaporean investment company Temasek from 2012 until last year. He was previously chief financial officer of the Swiss bank UBS AG.

Jain and Fitschen have sought to move the bank past lawsuits and legal issues that in some cases dated back years and stressed the need for the bank to change its culture. Still, those issues have continued to cast the bank in an unflattering light.

In April, Deutsche Bank agreed to pay $2.5 billion to authorities in the United States and Britain to settle allegations its traders rigged important market interest-rate benchmarks used to determine rates on a variety of debt.

Unrelatedly, Fitschen and two predecessors went on trial that month on charges of attempted fraud for allegedly colluding to deceive judges in a long-running legal battle with a now-deceased media mogul, Leo Kirch. Fitschen and the other defendants have denied any wrongdoing.

Deutsche Bank also recently announced a reorganization that will involve spinning off its Postbank branches in Germany, closing offices in some countries and eliminating less-profitable business at its investment banking division.

With that strategy in place, “which puts the bank’s future on a strong track, it is right for the bank and for me to have new leadership at this time,” Jain said in a statement.

Jain has been with Deutsche Bank for 20 years and headed its investment banking unit before becoming co-CEO.

Supervisory board chairman Paul Achleitner said “without his efforts, our bank today would not have achieved or sustained its global leadership.” He said the co-CEOs’ decision to depart early “demonstrates impressively their attitude of putting the bank’s interests ahead of their own.”

Achleitner added that Cryan “knows the bank well, and we are convinced that he is the right person at the right time.”